


The Witch Run of Gethryck

by icarus_chained



Category: Original Work
Genre: Bicycles, Courtship, Feuds, Folklore, Gen, Gossip, Slice of Life, Wild Hunt, Witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-21
Updated: 2016-06-21
Packaged: 2018-07-16 10:40:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7264708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every year on the twenty third day of Aubyn, in the counties of Wychfarm, Lydd, Cathyll and Mayffryn in the province of Gethryck, the annual Witch Run takes place. It's done so in one form or another for over five hundred years now, and there's nobody in the four counties who’ll say a word against it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Witch Run of Gethryck

**Author's Note:**

> A random bit of a thing because I watched a nun sail through town on her bicycle this morning on the way to work. There's probably more than a little bit of a) Silver John and b) Discworld in this.

Every year on the twenty third day of Aubyn, in the counties of Wychfarm, Lydd, Cathyll and Mayffryn in the province of Gethryck, the annual Witch Run takes place. It's done so in one form or another for over five hundred years now, and there's nobody in the four counties who’ll say a word against it. Well. Not out loud, anyway. Not if they know what's good for them. The old witch blood is part of the fabric of Gethryck. As much good trying to tell the hills to up and walk away.

Though that has been known to happen, mind you. At least once, back when the Terrycks held the county seat at Mayffryn-nyr-Wyye. Leastyn Knoll woke up one day, after two thousand years of sleeping, and just up and took itself for a stroll, taking with it three farms, a brook, and the village of Least. They fetched up over in Durnynam about a decade or so later. Settled down quite nicely too, by all accounts. There's some good Gethryck blood over in the eastlands now. No harm in that at all. Take a bit of the water out of their veins. Doesn’t do a folk any good to be mingling with the salt-marsh the way that lot tend to. Bit of witch blood to even it out will do no harm. Leastways that’s what any good Gethryn will tell you.

There’s always been the witches here. It's the air in the hills, the spirit lamps up across the heathers. Air and fire and the rolling stormlights. They seep down across the land, into the plants and the animals and the lungs. Into the childer. You’ll always know a witch-child. They've the spirit light in their eyes. You'll see 'em looking up always, up across the heathers, towards the wyspers on the heights. Oh aye. You'll always know a witch-child. It's the witch-grown that you might have trouble with. Some of 'em get sly as they grow into their legs. Some of 'em learn to hide.

That's not because they need to, you know. There's nobody in the four counties would raise a hand against a witch, nor tolerate an outsider to do so either. They're the blood of Gethryck, have been for a thousand years. There's nobody who'd stand to see any one of ‘em harmed. Not for being a witch, anyway. There's some no better than they should be, who've earned a blow or two for other reasons entirely. That's fair enough. They're not exempt, the witches. They bow to justice same as anyone, and they've their arguments with the neighbours same as anyone. That's different. That's not a reason to have to hide. There's no real reason for that.

Some of them are sly, that's all. Some of 'em like to go unremarked, just until they've got what they want from someone. They know how to hide themselves, how to make their eyes dim and dull as ditchwater, how to damp down the airy fire that clings to them from down off the hills. There's a witch or two knows how to hide in Gethryck. There always has been.

And that's why the Witch Run. Oh, it's not the reason told to anyone, it's never the reason said out loud. Folk call that tradition, an honouring of the blood and of the lights in the hills. But down under that, in the spaces where everybody knows and nobody has to say. The real reason for the Witch Run is so all of ‘em might be seen. One day a year. You come to watch and see who among your neighbours was what.

They're all bound to run it, you see. Five hundred years now, it's as much part of the land here as the blood and the hills themselves. Every witch in Gethryck takes their place in the Run. A witch always knows a witch. It was the old agreement to let none of their own go unmarked for all to see. And, too, there's none of them who'll miss it. The Run calls to the blood. To fly together, all of them, it calls the lights down out of the hills, the storms down out of the air. It calls the wyspers up, all the spirits of the Gethryck hills. The Witch Run sets the land on fire, a storm running from ridge to ridge and peak to peak, setting the sky to light and the land itself to waken. No witch with blood in their veins could turn their backs on that. None with the least fire in their heart can turn themselves away. They come, every one of them. They come at dusk on the twenty third day of Aubyn, to the great open field under Lambly Crag, and they set themselves to ranks against the night.

In the old days, of course, the great majority of them would have taken their brooms, the twisted old branches from the scrub trees on the heights. Some of ‘em do still. That truly is tradition, and there are some would snap their limbs in two before they broke it. But the world has moved on some, hasn’t it. The world has changed a bit. There are some now take a slightly different approach to their Run.

There are some who run in truth, the giddy bounders and the leapers on the heights. To be fair, there’d always been them. Those are the wild ones, the hill witches, the ones who walk and set no roots beside a brook. Stormcrows, they're called. The wandering witches, closer to wyspers than to earthen folk. They need no brooms to join the Run, to cross all of Gethryck inside a night. They're older than that, in some ways. The oldest guard among the host, the ones who carry all the hill-fire in their eyes and in their veins. There are some rumoured to be truly old as well. There're some bounders said to have mapped the land in the first Witch Run ever held in Gethryck, and learned it better every one of the five hundred runs since. Nobody could tell you which for sure, but there are a few consistent rumours. Sally Longlegs from the Wychlynn Uplands. The Lady of Gregynn Peak. Tam Shilly from Lydd-nyr-Luck and the long ridge into Myrton to the north. The old guard. The ones who've been there forever.

But there are new as well as old. The great sweep of progress from the great cities to the south and west hasn't entirely passed Gethryck by. As much as there are brooms and bounders among the host, there are some now who take a more modern approach to the great summer wheel along the hills. The ladies of Mayffryn-nyr-Wyye were the first to embrace the new contraptions. Twenty four years past this Aubyn, the Mayffryn Ladies Bicycle Club proudly took place at the heart of the Run, heads held high and ignoring every snicker among the more traditional witches of the host, and set themselves to cycle the sky alight.

And the thing of it is, they’d not done wrong. Oh, you could ask any one of the old, died-in-the-wool broom beaters, and two decades on they'll still tell you how absolutely appalling the use of such abominations is, how much a disgrace to the old blood and to the hills and to all of Gethryck itself. Pure nonsense, all of it. They should be banned from it altogether. But the fact of it is, the bicycles do the job as well as any broom, and by many accounts to the absolute delight of the wyspers as well. The spirits find the things wonderfully fascinating. Wheels spinning among the fire and the lightning, handlebars to prop your feet on and share a pipe with a stormlight over Terryck Ridge, a basket to pack some supper in. It’d been the delight of half the host back then. It still is. About a third of the contingent have gleefully embraced them these last few years, and there were more of the young lads and ladies on bicycles than there were on brooms in the last five Runs.

There's been a few of the old ones, too. Rychild Gerrill, one of the oldest bounders in the hills, a man as easily rumoured for five hundred as Tam or Longlegs or the Lady, had fallen rapturously in love with the new machines, that very first run watching the Mayffryn Bicycle Club. Rumour has it he’d all but made court to Lyse Terryck, the club’s president, for word or favour on how to acquire one, and most in his own county of Cathyll swear that whatever machine she got him, it hasn’t been the one he’s ended up with. His is a great black beast of a thing, all ponderous metal and wildly spinning wheels. There's stories he witched a storm spirit inside the thing, taking no great persuasion to manage it, and he’s taken to terrorising every road in the county with it ever since. The Witch Run is only his way of bringing that terror to all of Gethryck in turn these days, and he takes the opportunity with all glee and malice every time. 

This has done the bicycle cause no favours whatsoever, of course. When Alyse Myyr, one of the most hidebound broom traditionalists, had lambasted him from a height at the start the Run twenty years since, Rychild chased her like a grinning demon over peak and valley for the entire rest of the Run, and started off one of the few honest-to-blood witch feuds the hills have seen for over a hundred years. They're at it still to this day. Myyr’s entire contingent have made it their mission every Run since to hunt Rychild down and smash his bicycle to smithereens, while Rychild in turn seems to have made a game of knocking as many as possible off their brooms.

And there are rumours, too, that Lyse Terryck has been seen riding to his rescue on more than one occasion as well, her silver bicycle neat and gleaming under her, her hat firmly on her head and her teeth grinning around her pipe as she casually elbows Alyse’s brother, Bryton Myyr, off into the heather. The Mayffryn Ladies Bicycle Club are not to be messed with, no sir. And there's some who think that Rychild Gerrill may be making court to Lyse in truth.

And this, you see, all of this, this is the _other_ reason for the Witch Run. To let them all be seen, to know which of your neighbours has been hiding witch eyes the last nine months to wilt your garden and knot your threads and steal your lover’s favour. To call the witches together, to ride out as a host such as has ridden for five hundred years now, to wake the land around them and honour a thousand years of witch blood in the Gethryck hills.

And, at the base of it, most importantly of all … to provide every heart in Gethryck with entertainment, and every wagging tongue with enough gossip to last five hundred years again.


End file.
